The #SolitudeChallenge

For this assignment, I turned on my lava lamp, salt rock, closed my curtains and sat on my bed. The room was slightly dark, but enough to where I can see. The light glowing from my lava lamp and salt rock lit up the room and created a very Zen environment. Sitting like this for thirty minutes, I was not sure if I was going to be able to do it the entire time, and that was my mind set at the beginning of this challenge. But once I got passed that, I actually really enjoyed the rest of my time sitting in peace. I felt my mind drifting a lot, but my favorite part was absolutely being unplugged from everything. I am the type of person who is very aware of my addiction to technology, and I absolutely hate it. I have become so accustom to constantly being on social media, updating people about what I’m doing, and where I’m going, that it has taken a piece of my life away.

So, by having this time to be alone and have these thoughts run throughout my mind, it was extremely refreshing to know that I don’t need technology. Specifically, over the past couple of months I have gone back and forth on deleting some social media because, it has been such a distraction in my life. I find myself stopping my homework to check my Instagram feed, and looking at the same posts for the 5th time that I’ve already liked. Which is why that moving forward I do plan on disconnecting myself from social media for a bit. Especially when im going to start my professional career soon.

They say that it takes sixty six days to develop a habit, and for someone that has been accustom to social media for as many years as I have, I know it will take a lot of dedication to cut myself off from it for a while. I’m not looking to do it permanently, but enough to where I can understand that I am okay not having to check and post on it constantly. I want to be able to live my life authentically and be more aware of what goes around me.

One thing that has changed my mindset a lot over the past month or so, is the meditation that my marketing professor likes to do at the beginning of every class. At first, I thought it was pretty ridiculous, but it started to grow on me. I feel as if this was a form of habit that was created, and when we skip over it in class, I get disappointed. We have done different types of meditation such as, self awareness, mindfulness, body scanning, and labeling thoughts/emotions just to name a few. I was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I have, but that just goes to show that habits can be created without intention, both positive and negative.